A number of smaller workstation vendors are rushing to fill a very lucrative niche; the likes of Coreto, Scan, Velocity Micro and Boston have a tiny window of opportunity before the computer giants (Lenovo, HP and Dell) jump on AMD’s EPYC bandwagon.
The EPYC 7702 is currently the best option out there if you're looking for the pinnacle of desktop performance – put it this way, you won’t find anything from Intel that will even come close to what AMD's Rome series CPU has to offer.
Rome offers 64 cores and 128 threads, and you can pair two together to get the sort of processing power that was found in supercomputers only a couple of decades ago.
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At $51,399, the Apple’s Mac Pro has “only” 28 cores (Intel Xeon W-3275M) and accommodates up to 1.5TB memory, two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo (that’s four GPU and 128GB HBM2 memory) and an 8TB SSD.
How does that compare to, say, an a-X2 from Mediaworkstations containing the EPYC 7702?
For a start, the a-X2 is a little more expensive at just over $53,000 (roughly £41,500 / AU$81,800). However, you get two 64-core processors, 2TB of memory, a pair of Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 GPU with 48GB GDDR6 memory, and 8.68TB worth of high speed storage. For peace of mind, a three-year warranty with next business day onsite service is also thrown in.
It's true, the casing (adorned by two 200mm front intake fans) is not as alluring as the Mac Pro's aluminium housing, but you get so much more for your money.
Note, while Mediaworkstations ships internationally, you may have to pay additional tax depending on your location.
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